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  “Baron Sand,” she repeated, with a certain fastidious distaste. “I should’ve known.”

  “So what now?” Ryan asked.

  For a moment Dark Lady kept her head down. She looked oddly vulnerable like that. The shadows hollowed her cheeks to the point of gauntness and made her eyes look huge. Like a lost little girl, Mildred thought.

  When she looked up her expression was resolute.

  “I hired you to bring back a certain object,” she said crisply. “I still want it. Nothing has changed.”

  “Where is this Baron Sand to be found, exactly?” Ryan asked.

  “On Arroyo de Bromista. It’s about two miles northwest of here, nestled against the ridges that ring Santana Basin on that side. It should be no more than a bracing hour’s walk for travelers as seasoned as you.”

  Ryan rubbed his jaw. Mildred heard his coarse blue-black beard bristles crackle against his palm.

  “Yeah. You mean for us to go now? Tonight?”

  “By no means,” she said. “You shall sleep here. I have already had rooms prepared. Nothing is likely to have changed by the morning.”

  She looked from one of them to the other with her dark, haunted eyes.

  “You would not find it easy to sneak into the Baron’s Casa de Broma.”

  Ryan grunted. “Come to that,” he said, “we didn’t find it so rad-blasted easy to sneak into the bastard freak show, either.”

  Chapter Eight

  They spent the night in several fairly comfortable rooms on the Library Lounge’s second floor. The gaudy did not attract much morning custom, it turned out. And not surprisingly the gaudy sluts of both sexes slept late, as apparently did their employer.

  The only person in the barroom when Ryan led his friends down the stairs just after dawn was Mikey-Bob, both of whose heads were unusually taciturn. Without speaking a word he served them a breakfast of scrambled eggs, ham, boiled beans and chunks of sourdough bread. Then he retreated into the kitchen.

  “I guess they’re not a morning person,” Mildred said.

  They lingered over mugs of what tasted surprisingly to Ryan like real coffee. That was a rare and expensive trade item. He judged the gaudy, at least, had to be doing even better than he’d initially thought.

  He drained the final drop from the fired-clay mug and set it back down on the tabletop. Then he stood, picked up his Steyr from where he had it leaned against the wall beside his chair and swung out the double doors.

  The morning sun wasn’t far up the bright sky, but its light on his face was nearly hot. It was shaping up to be a fine high desert day.

  A fair number of people were on the street when the seven companions set out. Some walked briskly on errands or pushed handcarts with goods in them. A pair of laughing children chased a small blue-dotted dog with one blue eye and one brown across the street in front of them, laughing. A medium-size guy in an apron swept off a wooden sidewalk beneath a sign that read V. W. Kennard’s Dry Goods and General Confusion. He lifted his head to leer at Krysty and Mildred as they passed without missing a beat with his broom.

  “For a fact,” Doc observed, “the people of the ville do not seem intimidated by the presence of visibly armed strangers.”

  “Mebbe that’s because a lot of them are packing heat themselves,” J.B. observed.

  Ryan had already taken that in.

  A sturdily built, handsome woman with short red hair appeared in the door of the general store, scrubbing her hands on a rag.

  “Wilson,” she commanded the sweeper, “stop pestering the pretty ladies and get your butt inside. You’ve got serious work to be done.”

  “Sure, Kris. Anything you say.”

  His apparent wife lingered a moment in the doorway, giving Ryan a far from disinterested look. He nodded politely and walked on. She laughed and vanished inside.

  “They go to pains to not show it,” Ryan remarked, “but this seems like a pretty flush place.”

  “Peculiar,” Doc said. “Inasmuch as this is not precisely prime farming land. Nor is there any other visible source of wealth, beyond the Library Lounge. The ville is not even situated on a river.”

  “I think the people probably grow gardens in their back lots,” Krysty said. She smiled at the old man. “As for where their water comes from, I suspect the name ‘Amity Springs’ may hold a clue.”

  Doc laughed. “Indeed, you are most perceptive, as usual.”

  “Still doesn’t explain where they get the jack to afford pretty decent sidearms,” Mildred said.

  The ville ended abruptly, though a busy wag yard sprawled just beyond its west end. It gave way to what the locals termed Newcombe Flats, which occupied most of the Santana Basin: land as level as advertised, furred with still-brown grass and dotted with rabbit brush, saltbush and true sagebrush scrub as far as the eye could see. A dirt road led straight on, meeting up in a mile or so, they were told, with the Río Piojo, the largish stream that ran from east to west across the basin and provided most of its water.

  They followed that for about half the distance, Jak walking point, then Ryan with Krysty by his side, and then Doc and Mildred, with Ricky and J.B. bringing up the rear deep in conversation. They passed various wags, mostly horse-drawn, headed toward the ville. The occupants watched them warily but without undue alarm as they passed.

  “Looks like they don’t get too much trouble hereabouts,” J.B. called.

  “Not before we got here,” Ricky said, and then laughed too enthusiastically to show it was a joke.

  “Yeah, well, be glad nobody’s going to take us for Crazy Dogs,” Mildred said. “These people look like they’re ready for trouble when it does hit.”

  “Suggesting that, while they have little to fear from day to day, trouble nonetheless does find its way here occasionally,” Doc commented.

  “Isn’t that why they try to conceal their prosperity?” Krysty asked. “To avoid attracting that kind of attention?”

  “Yeah,” Ryan said. “But that kind of attention has a way of sniffing out ace targets. It’s likely why the Crazy Dogs have started sniffing around.”

  They came to what looked like nothing but a pair of wheel ruts that ran off the main drag a bit to the north of northwest. A few low lumps of hills and longer yellow bars of ridge were visible off that way. Instructed by Mikey-Bob before they’d left the gaudy, they turned onto the track.

  A short while later the track veered right to run up a stream that seemed to be flowing from the ridges to meet the Río Piojo. “This must be Arroyo de Bromista,” Krysty said.

  “Why would they call it Joker Creek?” Ricky asked.

  “Anybody’s guess,” Ryan said. “Odds are nobody even remembers why now.”

  They began to pass through cultivated lands. Houses grew among the early sprouting crops, mostly low one-or two-room blocks with adobe walls. People were working erecting frames of sticks for beans and vine crops to climb. Others turned compost heaps with shovels and pitchforks, or tended already-sprouting plants in neat raised beds with sides made of stone or scavvy.

  As they worked, they chatted and laughed among themselves. They did stop talking and working to stare at the intruders when they became aware of them, then they resumed work and the conversation began to flow again. More guardedly, Ryan thought, as if the farmers were keeping an eye on the party as it walked upstream.

  “They don’t seem oppressed,” Mildred said. “I hope that’s a good sign.”

  Ryan took her meaning. They were about to approach a baron who had paid to have some valuable object stolen—to demand that the baron give it back. Even an average baron—meaning no crazier nor cruel than most—would tend to react unfavorably to such a request.

  “That’s a pretty imposing house,” Mildred said, nodding ahead, where the road ended on a slight slow
rise.

  “Yeah,” Ryan said.

  The baron’s residence was just a single story that sprawled considerably. Though “sprawl” didn’t seem quite right for a building so imposing. It was built in the style of the old Colonial buildings a person might see farther south, down along the Río Grande Valley and points west: blocky, flat-roofed, doubtless with a parapet, and thick sawed-off beam ends protruding from the rafters that held up the roofs.

  The walls, he didn’t doubt, were also of that style: a good three feet thick and made of adobe. Which would stop a round from his .308 rifle stone cold, and give a direct hit from a howitzer or a wag-chiller missile a run for its money.

  “I’m guessing a direct assault is right out?” Mildred asked.

  “That’s good, Mildred,” Ryan said. “One of these days you might actually learn a tactic.”

  “Thank you so much. Somebody remind me, what does ‘Casa de Broma’ mean? My pitiful Spanish isn’t up to the task.”

  “‘Funhouse,’ basically,” Ricky answered. He sounded pleased, as he always did when he got to show that he knew something. He didn’t do it enough to be a pain. Usually. “Or playhouse.”

  “That could go either way,” Mildred said.

  “I know which way I’m going to expect it to go,” Ryan said, meaning due south.

  “Well, the building’s defensible,” J.B. said, “but I can’t say as much for the location. Not that close to the heights.”

  “Yeah,” Ryan said.

  The ridges, which looked to be some kind of yellow sandstone cliffs, rose steeply a couple hundred yards beyond the big house and its gaggle of wood and adobe outbuildings. Including, Ryan noted, a pole barn and a large windowless structure with adobe walls and a lean-to style roof that looked to be a mix of sheet metal, planks and asphalt tiles that lay behind the playhouse. The creek ran down an arroyo that split the cliffs. A narrow, somewhat steep dirt road ran alongside it.

  “Those cliffs aren’t close enough for people to jump on the roof or throw stuff down on it,” Ryan said. “But sharpshooters up there could lay waste to anybody trying to defend from the roof. Plus shoot down through it at an angle that could lay some serious hurt on people inside.”

  “At least there aren’t any guards,” Ricky said.

  He’d pushed it too far in his eagerness to show off. Jak, cruising a bit ahead of the rest, yipped a laugh like an amused coyote. Then Ricky uttered a surprised yip of his own.

  “Ow!”

  Ryan looked back. Ricky had ducked his head into the collar of his shirt. J.B. had his left hand up behind the boy’s head, which he had obviously just thwacked with his two upraised fingers.

  “What?” Ricky asked.

  “No guards that you see, boy,” J.B. said. “Keep mixing that up with there not being any guards, you’ll wind up with dirt hitting you in the eyes before you know what’s what.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well, Jak,” Ryan called, “you had your laugh. Are there guards?”

  “No. Ricky assumed. Made ass.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mildred said. “The expression is, ‘when you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.’ But that’d require Bayou Boy to use actual prepositions.”

  There were plenty of windows, Ryan noted. They looked to be made out of good glass, clear and not too wavy. That made them triple expensive, whether they were scavvy or modern manufacture. Pale curtains hung on the insides—and as they approached the pink-painted wooden door, he could see they were hanging at least three feet in.

  Fortress, all right.

  “So, do we just walk up and knock?” asked Krysty.

  Jak walked up almost to the door, then along the front of the house to the right, where he stopped and peered suspiciously around the corner. From the direction of the pole barn, now out of sight behind the house, a horse or two nickered at the approach of strangers.

  Jak leaned back and shook his head. Nobody in sight. He tipped his head slightly to his left. Ryan knew the albino was asking if he should cruise around and check out the back. He shook his head.

  “I notice none of the happy peasants came running to alert the big boss man that there were armed and presumed dangerous strangers headed up to his doorstep,” Mildred said. “Maybe the peasants aren’t all that happy with the existing social order, after all.”

  “Just because we don’t see any guards, doesn’t mean there weren’t lookouts,” Krysty said. “Also, there’s a reason they call these ‘flats.’ They could have seen us coming a quarter mile away. We don’t know if the peasants didn’t see us and sent word. In fact, I’d be surprised if they didn’t send a kid or two running to tell the baron. Meaning the baron decided we weren’t threatening enough to merit breaking up the workday to go into defensive mode.”

  His companions gathered, Ryan stepped up to the door. Its carved wood projected solidity. He reached up to give it an authoritative rap.

  The door opened.

  Inside stood, or slouched, a slender young man. He wore a loose and dirty off-white smock over dark pants. His brown feet were bare.

  He blinked big black eyes at Ryan. His face was a narrow oval, with a hint of puff to the jawline and below the eyes. A dark beard and mustache framed his pouty lips, just past the stubble point.

  “What took you so long?” he asked with languid insolence.

  Chapter Nine

  “We keep our own schedule,” Ryan said. “We’re here to see Baron Sand.”

  “Of course you are.” The young man yawned. “Everyone wants to see Baron Sand. And what is that to me?”

  Ryan opened his mouth to tell him it was a matter of whether Ryan went past him or through him.

  “Oh, knock off the posturing and invite our guests in, Mystery,” a contralto voice said from the dimness beyond. A waft of jasmine and incense hit Ryan in the face.

  Mystery scowled rebelliously and jutted his jaw. But he stepped back from the doorway with a dancer’s grace. With a wordless flourish he invited Ryan inside.

  The one-eyed man crossed the threshold and took a quick step right. That was to get away as fast as possible from being silhouetted against the brilliant daylight outside—an ideal target. Also, it was to spoil the targeting solutions for any lower-energy attacks that might be heading his way, like a bat to the brainpan.

  He ended up bumping into a table with his upper thigh. It promptly tipped over.

  “Fireblast,” he said. He bent his knees and grabbed, catching it and righting it before it fell over.

  “You are a bit on the clumsy side,” the butter-smooth voice said, “but you have a panther’s grace and reflexes.”

  “Not so fast,” a man said, stepping forward. He was a bulldog; not tall, but wide in the shoulders, chest and gut. “No blasters or weapons of any kind allowed. I’m going to have to pat you down.”

  “Not with any hands you got an interest in keeping,” Ryan growled. He badly wanted to talk to the baron, and preferred to defer trouble as long as possible, if not avoid it altogether. But once you let somebody like that get away with something, they wouldn’t ever stop until they were grinding your face in the dirt. Ryan reckoned he had to shut this evident sec boss down and fast, whatever that took.

  “Oh, put it back in your pants, Trumbo,” the contralto said. “They can stack their longblasters inside the door. I have my standards. But I’m not so timid as to get the vapors from the sight of a few holstered weapons.”

  The man turned back. “It isn’t safe, Baron.”

  “What is that’s any fun?” the baron said. “Are you saying you don’t trust you and your men to stop them if they try anything?”

  Trumbo growled low in his thick throat and backed away. He had a round, jowly face and thick black eyebrows. It was a face made for scowling, and he made the m
ost of it.

  “I’m Baron Sand, for the benefit of those crowding around the doorway outside. You might as well come in, dears. We’ll make room.”

  For a fact, though the hacienda’s front room was spacious beneath the heavy exposed roof beams known as vigas, it looked a bit crowded. As much by the swathes of fabric, mostly black and purple, hung along the walls as by a handful of what Ryan guessed were the baron’s favored lackeys—who were young and pretty, like Mystery, and seemed to be both male and female. The hangings made the place look as if it was the lair of a large and somewhat psychedelic spider.

  Ryan suspected that was more or less the case.

  Doffing his hat politely, J.B. nodded at the far wall. “Nice,” he said.

  Ryan followed his gaze. On a bare spot on the white-stuccoed adobe hung a large painting of Elvis on black velvet in an ostentatious gold-painted frame. Despite himself, Ryan grinned.

  “Now you know who I am,” the baron said, puffing on a cheroot. “The polite thing would be for you to introduce yourselves. I know who you are, of course, but I like to hear it just the same. I’m terribly old-fashioned that way.”

  Ryan frowned. “How do you know our names?”

  “Spies in the ville, of course. Certainly you already figured out I had them. After all, I knew precisely where to send my dear friend Madame Z’s delightful wall-climbing kiddies, as well as what to look for.

  “I won’t insult your intelligence, Mr. Ryan Cawdor, without due provocation. I ask you to return the favor. Especially since you are my guests, in my pirate stronghold.”

  “You’re really a pirate?’ asked Ricky, coming in last after everybody else had stepped inside and shifted to put their backs to the front wall. He sounded both eager and afraid.

  “As far as you know,” Sand murmured. Her lids were at half mast over green eyes set in a sort of plump-cheeked moon face. Her hair was short and blond. “Robber Baron might be a more...current term. And you must be the Morales boy.”